McCain has been able to get away with showing up just in time to shoot the politically wounded for years now.

He made sure to denounce attacks on Sen. John Kerry’s war record in the 2004 presidential election after those attacks had done most of their political damage, but pundits still cite that denunciation as evidence of McCain’s charming “maverick” tendencies. His criticism of the war effort has, for the most part, come after the fact, not before, when it could have had some effect. McCain may say now, as he did last August, that “it grieves me so much that we have not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be.”

But as the war began, McCain was agreeing publicly with Vice President Dick Cheney that U.S. troops would be greeted with joy by Iraqis. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” McCain told his slavish admirer Chris Matthews, “that we will prevail and there’s no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators.”

But the most damning evidence of McCain’s opportunistic hypocrisy has come on an issue on which many colleagues looked to him for guidance: torture. A victim of cruel treatment while held prisoner by the North Vietnamese almost four decades ago, McCain famously pushed through a law in 2005 that prohibited inhumane treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, over the Bush administration’s objections.

But when Bush amended that law himself in a “signing statement,” abrogating responsibility for deciding how and when torture would be used after all, what did we hear from McCain? Only silence. He did not speak up about the president’s essential override of the will of Congress until running for president this past February.

That mean-looking motherfucker in the coat and hat above was Big Bill Haywood, a kick-ass union activist from the early 20th century.

When you look at him, you know he understood how to make his point clear.

Well, Big Bill, we could use you these days. I’ve been somewhat involved with my union’s negotiations with management lately.

Management is made up of reflexive assholes and retarded cuttlefish.

Seriously, fuck those people. I can’t imagine how much this would suck if we didn’t have our union. And I just don’t understand why more working people don’t support them. I’ve worked jobs in a union, and I’ve worked jobs without one. Having a union is infinitely preferable to not having one. Workers can get a much better deal when they bargain collectively, and when they realize that the bosses need us far more than the converse.

Which, of course, is why unions scare the ever-loving shit out of the rich cocksuckers who run this country.

Today, at theWhite House, during the most lackluster presser in human history.

The Valley Girl President

I think the last time I visited with you it was like — I said it was like a tax increase on the working people.

Brainwreck

They ought to say, why don’t we — I proposed, you might remember, taking some abandoned military bases and providing regulatory relief so we can build new refineries.

Medulla Ohmigodda

I mean, if we’re generally interested in moving forward with an energy policy that sends a signal to the world that we’re not — we’re going to try to become less reliant upon foreign oil, we can explore at home, as well as continue on with an alternative fuels program.

The Words On How To Define The Economy

I mean, you know, the words on how to define the economy don’t reflect the anxiety the American people feel.

His Answer To High Fuel Prices

We’re transitioning to a new era, by the way — a new era where we’re going to have batteries in our cars that will power — enable people to drive 40 miles on electricity.

His Understanding Of Supply And Demand

We can also send a clear signal that we understand supply and demand, and then when you don’t build a refinery for 30 years, it’s going to be a part of restricting supply.

Fancy-Ass Words

As a matter of fact, the solution to the issue of corn-fed ethanol is cellulosic ethanol, which is a fancy word for saying we’re going to make ethanol out of switchgrasses, or wood chips.

What We Got To Understand

And we got to understand we’re in a transition period.

Synaptic Stutter

And so you ask — you say that people think we can’t — there’s not any more reserves to be found.

What New Technologies Enable For

New technologies enables for — to be able to drill like we’ve never been able to do so before — slant hole technologies and the capacity to use a drill site, a single drill site, to be able to explore a field in a way that doesn’t damage the environment.

Cant’t Stand The Stand

And one of the — for example, one of the things the — al Qaeda would like to do is blow up oil facilities, understanding we’re in a global market, a attack on an oil facility in a major oil-exporting country would affect the economies of their enemy — that would be us, and other people who can’t stand what al Qaeda stands for.

Which Vision

I think we’re making progress in Afghanistan, but there’s a very resilient enemy that obviously wants to kill people that stand in the way of their reimposition of a state that is — which vision is incredibly dark.

Does Not Understand What “Asymmetrical Warfare” Means

We’re dealing with a group of ideologues who use asymmetrical warfare — that means killing innocent people — to try to achieve their objectives.

A Clear Message To Syria

And finally, we wanted to make it clear to Syria — and the world — that their intransigence in dealing with helping us in Iraq, or destabilizing Lebanon, or dealing with Hamas — which is a destablizing force in our efforts to have a Palestinian state coexist peacefully with Israel — that those efforts are — gives us a chance to remind the world that we need to work together to deal with those issues.

We Have Done Increasing

And in the meantime we have done, increasing CAFTA, for example.

Actually Not A Matter Of Fact

That’s why I told you that if Congress had responded — matter of fact, Congress did pass ANWR in the late 1900s — 1990s — and the 1900s — 1990s.

There Is Rumors

There’s rumors about Iranian help.

Provoke Response

So when you want to talk about peace being difficult in the Middle East — it’s going to be difficult, but it’s even made more difficult by entities like Hamas, who insist upon lobbing rockets into Israel, trying to provoke response and trying to destabilize — even destabilize the region more.

There Is Initiatives

There’s some very interesting initiatives that are being developed there.

What You Got To Ask

But you got to ask, why is Hamas lobbing rockets?

What We Got To Do

And to answer whether or not people’s conversation — whether they’re more effective, all we got to do is watch to see how Hamas behaves.

What It’s Got

It’s a country that used to be an exporter of food; it’s now got terrible human conditions there.

The story was a giggling GOP oppo plant, but that didn’t stop the kewl kidz from running with it. I don’t need to remind you about John Kerry and his “butler” and the “green tea” and the “wit-whiz” psuedoscandals of 2004. If Clinton were still the front runner, she’d be portrayed in the press as a cross between Dalmation draped Cruella DeVille and Evita Peron with her 100 million and Bubba trophy husband. (Actually, she is — they aren’t taking any chances.)

Meanwhile, you have a temperamental, fabulously wealthy, flip-flopping, seventy one year old warmonger on the other side who’s being called “the coolest guy in school” by 20-something reporters.

Nobody should be surprised or unprepared for this by now. I think Obama’s campaign people underestimated how this label could be applied to their guy and they allowed it to play out in Pennsylvania in ways that should have been anticipated. But then I have always wondered why Democrats are always off guard every time this hits them.

The reason most Democrats seem so caught off guard by this, the constant repetition of the unassailable fact that our candidate — whoever he or she is — is a whiny pussy is that they don’t get what it’s really about. I’m not talking just that he or she isn’t a whiny pussy, or really bowls very well, or likes orange juice, or windsurfs and drinks green tea. It’s not just that they’re trying to argue the facts in a campaign about first impressions and whispered innuendos. It’s not just that they’re trying to argue the facts in a campaign that’s not about facts at all, that (as Interrobang points out so wonderfullyhere) is all about throwing six things at the wall so that you can’t pick just one to argue back against and instead you say fuck it and head to the bar while they declare victory.

It’s that the elitist, guy-you’d-have-a-beer-with, person-just-like-me presidential campaign is, at its heart, about powerlessness.

Not theirs, either. Ours.

It’s about the assumption that on the really big questions, the war questions, the economy questions, the universal questions of justice and law, the questions of class, the questions of race, the questions of land and freedom, the questions that truly make us who we are, on those really big questions we can’t honestly affect anything. How much can we do? Look around. We got a Democratic Congress elected only to watch it roll over for everything the Bush administration wanted, only to see the war go on for two more years. We got candidates elected only to watch them betray the things they promised us they stood for. We got new media started only to realize that no matter how many books we sold, nobody’d listen to us anyway. We kicked and screamed and fought and bit like wild dogs and for every step forward that we take together about half of us are bitching at the tops of our lungs that this isn’t the right way, give me the map, I’m gonna drive from now on, not you.

And that? That’s me beingencouraging andoptimistic. That’s me being the person who’s usually telling you to call your senators, show up to the rally, write wet-noodle Harry Reid a letter asking him not to be so bull-tits useless all the time. That’s me beingkind. Every single goddamn time somebody suggests that maybe you shouldn’t sit in your house and be directionlessly pissed off, that doing something is better than doing nothing always, always, a half a dozen asshole concern trolls pop out of the sewer pipes to point and laugh and mock your involvement, to tell you it’s dumb and you’re just embarrassing yourself. Asshole concern trolls, by the way, being employed by the major news networks, the RNC, or the American people in the form of Republican and Bush Dog Democratic congressmen, so it’s easy for them to sneer with a large microphone while you whisper into your tiny paper funnel.

We’ve all heard them: You’re an idiot, hippie. Sit the fuck down. Why are you protesting, hippie, protests never made anything happen (look for a renewed interest in THAT topic around convention time from professional “sensible liberal” fuckheads). Why are you writing to your dickheaded Republican senator, he’s not gonna listen. Why are you wasting time arguing with pro-lifers, with pro-choicers, with people who oppose or support the death penalty, why are you wearing a T-shirt that says Torture is Not An American Value, why are you doing anything? Don’t you know you can’t do anything? Didn’t anybody tell you? And a startling number of people who are supposed to be on “our” side are eager to join in because if there’s one thing a bully’s good at, it’s getting your own friends to laugh at you while he beats you black and blue.

And so after about 30 years of this, interspersed with memorable incidents in which people who did make a goddamn difference got shot a whole lot, what you end up with is an electorate convinced that the only thing they have the power to affect is the brand loyalties of the person they’re putting in the Oval Office. You might not get somebody in there to end the war and bring about the second New Deal but you sure as fuck aren’t gonna have to put up with a Pepsi drinker being all in your face all day. Or a guzzler of orange juice.An eater of arugula. Just fucking kill me now, but that’s where we’re at, that’s how our imagining of our own power has shrunk. It’s about powerlessness.This is all we think we have. Of course nothing’s different now. For eight years we’ve been told all we could do about terrorism was go shopping, for fuck’s sake. You can’t do anything. Sit in your house and be scared. Go to the mall, that’s an act of courage. They’ve asked us for nothing and so that’s what we’ve given, and slowly we’ve come to believe that that is all of which we are capable.

I used to think what happened to Gore had happened because the world was basically okay in 2000 for a lot of people so why not waste time on what he was wearing; then Kerry, in 2004, got hit with the same crap, and I thought, “There’s actual, real shit going on right now we need this man to deal with. Why’re they hassling him about ordering green tea in a restaurant? And why in the name of all that’s holy are people VOTING based on that?” Because it’s all they feel they can do. Because it’s all they have power over. Because the big decisions, in every other way, have been taken out of their hands. If all they’ve got left are the small ones, then that’s what they’ll argue. That’s what they’ll decide.

It’s not even that you’ve got a hammer and everything looks like a nail. It’s that they pounded in all the nails, took off the hammerhead and gave you a stick. Told you to hit a piñata with it.

Yesterday I wrote of the investigation of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson focusing on William Hairston, a friend and golfing buddy of Jackson whose receipt of a nearly half million dollar no bid contract is a focal point of the investigation. That post outlined the history of Hairston, a man who made a small fortune in the stucco construction biz using illegal Mexican labor. Hairston’s fortune turned though when those workers formed their own businesses and undercut Hairston’s bids causing his business to severely decline by 2005.

While the question of whether Jackson threw a contract to Hairston is a focal point to the investigation, evidence is emerging that the central figure in the investigation is the former“right arm” to Jackson and his deputy chief of staff, Scott Keller. Keller resigned from HUD in August amid investigation, ostensibly of course“to provide for his family” by returning to lobbying.

Scott Keller: If Past is Prologue

National Journal reports that “Keller played an important role in a decision” by HUD/HANO to award a $127 million project to a team which included a firm that owed between $250,000 – $500,000 to Alphonso Jackson “for past services.” Federal investigators are examining whether Keller aided Jackson in awarding that contract as well as another for managing the Virgin Islands Housing Authority to the close friends of Jackson. NJ reports that according to sources “a federal agent served a search warrant at Keller’s home in Alexandria, Va.” last month.

Like Hairston, Keller comes to this story with an interesting past, though murkier than Hairston’s somewhat hapless history.

In1994 Keller joined the Greenberg Traurig lobbying firm and rose to the director of governmental affairs at the Tallahassee office of Greenberg Traurig. If that name sounds familiar, think Jack Abramoff. Similar to Abramoff, it appears Scott Keller had a forray into the murky and ultimately illegal world of an Indian gambling lobbying scandal.

In April of 2003 theSt. Petersburg Times reported that a newly formed group with mysterious financial backing, called the Floridians for Family Values, was mailing out brochures to Floridians “aimed at derailing a Senate proposal to allow slot machines at parimutuel facilities.” The group was formed by lobbyist Cory Tilley, the former communications director and deputy chief of staff to Gov. Jeb Bush. Tilley refused to disclose the financial donors of the group. The SPTimes found that 2 women were listed as officers of the group. Tilley claimed not to know them. One woman, Robin Peraldo, claimed to have no knowledge of her name having been used for the group.

Public records in Orange County indicate that Peraldo is Kathleen
Keller’s daughter.A brother, Scott Keller, is a lobbyist with the
Greenberg Traurig Law Firm in Tallahassee. The firm filed the
corporation papers last month for Tilley, using names supplied by
Keller.

That of course refers to Jackson’s future “right arm.”

Needless to say the group’s actions were not popular with interests who advocated for the gambling measure andseveral months later one of them filed a complaint against the group with the Florida Elections Commission, an action which eventually would lead to the unmasking, of some but not all, of the details behind the mysterious group.

The New YorkTimes has aninteresting piece today about the 1970 voyage of the USSQueenfish (SSN-651) under the Arctic icepack.

This may not interest too many people other than myself, but I’m posting it anyway.

But Jude, you may ask, why does this interest you? That’s a good question. It turns out that I spent a number of years under the world’s oceans on board the black hulls of the US Navy’s submarine fleet. Yes. And I’m still a godless liberal. I guess I wasn’t a “real” sailor if I’m a heathen lefty, huh?

First Popeye and now this. I might have to add a new category for “sailor shit” if this keeps up.

In other science-type news, I’ve been meaning to say something about this for a few days, but other things (economic collapse, gay-bashing legislators, big-ass holidays) have been distracting me. The shuttle astronauts are currently in orbit, adding to the ISS. What are they adding? Our doom, that’s what.

A dozen people were killed in DuPage County in 2004, the highest total since there were 20 homicides in 1995. [snip]

Eight of DuPage’s homicide victims were killed with guns, one was stabbed and drowned, two were suffocated, and one was beaten to death.

DuPage also had a triple homicide this year. A Cicero man was charged with shooting three men in a Willowbrook parking lot. That crime was the county’s first triple slaying since Marilyn Lemak drugged and suffocated her three children in 1999.

No young children were slain in 2004, but five teenagers were. The youngest was 16-year-old Erin Justice of Aurora. Her stepfather was charged with killing her to keep her from testifying against him in a sexual-assault case.

Seven men–charged with nine murders–have pleaded not guilty, two suspects committed suicide, and the May 14 fatal shooting of Derrick Manard of Bensenville remains unsolved.

This is a chronology of DuPage homicide cases:

March 27–Erin Justice, 16, of Aurora was stabbed and drowned, police say, by Laurence Lovejoy, 38, her stepfather.

May 14–Derrick Manard, 30, was shot outside of a Bensenville apartment. It is the only case this year with no arrests.

May 16–Aldona Buciene, 49, of West Chicago, was suffocated in her home. Antanas Ramanauskas, an estranged boyfriend who was the main suspect, hanged himself the same day.

April 28–Vida McCree, 41, of Woodridge was strangled in her apartment. Jeffrey McCree, 33, her estranged husband, who had a long criminal record and was released from prison five days earlier, is charged with her slaying. Her body was stuffed into a suitcase and dumped in Chicago.

June 12–Nicholas Artman, 24, of Addison was beaten to death outside an Addison restaurant. Troy Kindt, 34, of Glen Ellyn, is charged in his death.

July 9–Michael Murray, 18, of Elmhurst was shot to death while playing poker at his birthday party. Anson Paape, 38, the Elmhurst host of the party, is charged with murder.

Sept. 14–Federico Torres, 36; Guillermo Armendariz, 36; and Hilario Ochos, 25, all of Texas, were shot to death in the parking lot of a Willowbrook restaurant. Hector Moya, 29, of Cicero is charged with all three slayings.

Oct. 3 –Jesus Campos, 18, of Streamwood, was shot to death in Addison. Miguel Brito, 16, of Addison, alleged to be a member of a rival gang, is charged with murder.

Oct. 9–Sade Glover, 17, was shot to death outside her Warrenville home. Joshua Matthews, 19, of Bellwood, is charged with killing her to keep her from testifying that he beat her.

Dec. 21–Guadalupe Beltran, 18, of West Chicago, was shot by her estranged boyfriend, Francisco Ceja, 18, of West Chicago. Ceja then fatally shot himself.

Move to the wealthy ‘burbs to remove your children from bad influences, David Brooks instructs. How’s that working out so far, Dave?

Finally, who here can rest assured that “those three gaps were the only
ones where such a method was used?” This is about as laughable as
scandal as you could imagine and it’s especially funny that the
response is “It’s all good.”

Last month FEMA released areport (pdf) chronicling waste and fraud in FEMA trailer maintenance and deactivation contracts. The GAO estimated that almost $30 million in waste or potentially fraudulent payments were made to contractors between June 2006 to January 2007 and “likely led to millions more in unnecessary spending beyond this period.” GAO prepared and reported on several case studies of potentially fraudulent payments. Though the report does not name the companies involved in the case studies, my research suggests that one case involves PRI/DJI a joint venture with ties to Fluor Corp.

BACKGROUND

The maintenance and deactivation (MD) contracts were born from
controversy and have continued to be mired in more controvery since
their inception. After criticism of the Bush administration’s awarding
of no bid contracts to 4 national firms shortly after Katrina struck,
FEMA decided to bid out 36 MD contracts to“small, local companies.” However
FEMA came under fire from local companies when the winning bids were
announced and it appeared FEMA was to give“more than
half the work to out-of-state companies.” One such company, DJI or Del-Jen Industries, did
not appear to be local (out of CA) or small as it was a wholly owned
subsidiary of Fluor Corp–one of the 4 large national companies that
originally received no bid contracts and also a company“with
campaign contributions lopsidedly in favor of the Republican Party.”

DJI partnered with PRI, or Project Resources Inc., as“part of a special
mentoring program that allows large firms [like DJI] to pair with small,
minority-owned ones” like PRI which are referred to as 8(a) companies.
However it was reported the joint venture PRI/DJI was awarded“two [MD] contracts of as much
as $100 million each as an 8A company.”

Given what the GAO found this appears accurate and not surprising.

POTENTIAL FRUAD

The GAO summarized one case of potential fraud as such:

In reality, FEMA awarded GSM contracts to two companies that did not appear to
have submitted independent bids, as required. These companies shared
pricing information prior to submitting proposals to FEMA and also
shared the same president and accountant. Personnel at both
companies also misrepresented their job titles and functions, a
potential violation of the False Statements Act.

I would submit the 2 companies are PRI/DJI though the GAO report does
not identify the companies. Rather the report lists the 10 contractors
in question in the report by numbers 1 through 10. The report states
that Contractors 4 and 5 are the same company which received 2 contracts
priced at $177,312,545 each (p16 of pdf). Research yieldsthis document which shows that PRI/DJI
received a MD contract for $177,312,545 as an 8(a) which is designated
by 8A in the accompanying code–HSFEHQ-06-R-8AMS– in the document. In the body of the GAO
report where the potential fraud is detailed it states: “FEMA awarded
one business two contracts: one contract as a “single entity” and one as
part of a “joint venture” with another firm.” Further in itsown
response to a
DHS Office of the Inspector General investigation on the 36 MD
contracts, FEMA identified PRI/DJI in the matter and defended their contract award by
saying the company was determined to be local but interestingly went on
to say that even if it were not local“it still would have received the
awards based on the pricing evaluation methodology used.”

That may be some FEMA truthiness to focus on “pricing
evaluation methodology” but the GAO report raises far more serious
problems with the contracts and the details of what they found ought to
be read. They are quite astounding. …

The Commission on Presidential Debates deigned NOLA wasn’t ready for a debate but Google and YouTubemust think otherwise.

Google, the dominant Web search engine, and
YouTube, the online video platform, are proposing the forum with the
major party presidential candidates be held Sept. 18 at the Ernest N.
Morial Convention Center, just after the parties complete their
conventions in late August and early September. It would be eight days
before the first scheduled presidential commission debate in Oxford,
Miss.

The announcement, made today on Google’s Web site, did not reveal
whether any of the candidates — presumptive Republican nominee Sen.
John McCain of Arizona, or Democratic candidates Sen. Barack Obama of
Illinois or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York — have agreed to
participate.

SNIP

The New Orleans forum will be hosted by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal,
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the same consortium that filed the
unsuccessful application with the debate commission: Women of the
Storm, the Greater New Orleans Foundation and Dillard, Loyola, Tulane
and Xavier universities.

I think it will be hard for the candidates to say no to this. Clinton and Obama were critical of NOLA being excluded by the debate commission and last week McCain was in NOLA making all kind of promises as well as you have Republican Bobby Jindal (whose name has come up frequently as a possible VP for McSame) pushing for it. But that may all end up to be meaningless in this crazy campaign…

On average, controlling for differences in depression, subjects who had gotten married over the five-year span between the two interviews reported improved psychological well-being in the second interview–scoring an average of 3.42 points lower on the 84-point depression scale–than their counterparts who did not marry.

When they teased apart how marriage affected those who had been depressed at the start of the study to those who had been happy, however, they came across something unexpected. The depressed who married scored an average of 7.56 points lower on the depression scale than the depressed who did not marry, while those who were happy and got married scored only 1.87 points lower on the scale.

In other words, marriage provided a much bigger psychological boost to the depressed subjects than to the happy subjects.

“We were surprised,” Frech told LiveScience. “We expected the depressed to have worse marital quality and therefore benefit less from a transition into marriage.”

I hate, hate, hatey-hate the article’s headline and lead:

New Depression Rx: Get Married

People who are looking to ease depression may have a new treatment option — marriage.

Marriage is not a way to fix your life. Marriage is not a solution. Marriage is not magic.

Am I happier married and depressed than I would be single and depressed? Absolutely. I have someone to remind me to take my pills when I forget and shove me out of bed when I don’t want to get up and hug me when I’m sad and nag me to see the doctor on a regular basis and listen to my complaining and forgive my meltdowns and just plain cheer me up a bit.

But this doesn’t mean that marriage has helped me be less depressed. It means my husband has helped me be less depressed. If I was married to an asshole, it wouldn’t matter that I was married, I’d still be alone and depressed. And if I wasn’t married, but had people who could fulfill those roles, the roles of members of a support system, I’d be better off with them than without.